Chad Franzen 9:31
How much would you say you know, you okay, compared to what you know, now, when you started? What what percentage of that? Would you say you knew then?
Hengam Stanfield 9:41
Probably 3% Oh, well. We did not know how to cut a pizza. I mean, that was that bad. You know, like when you cut with a cutter and it still doesn’t like fully cut. I mean, we didn’t know anything about the restaurant. I mean, we had never worked as a dishwasher. A lot of people worked at servers. Nothing at all. I mean, yeah,
Chad Franzen 10:00
So given that, what were the what were kind of the early days, the early days, like from a Tangos and the early days, like for you, while working there?
Hengam Stanfield 10:07
it was very, very hard. I mean, I remember one once my husband I, we were in the restaurant we bought the we did not know how to read the p&l, of course. And then when you buy a business, it is on you do you do your due diligence, the broker, it’s for profit, they want to make money, of course, and the business person who’s selling it, you know, they’re everybody’s fighting for their own. And so we need to do our own due diligence. It’s, we did not have to do that, of course. And so this is going to be a cash cow of a restaurant, it was probably it was making about an average of 500,000 a year, this restaurant, and it was probably 150,000. Below, breakeven, that’s what it was. So we worked about 120 hours a week, my parents also lived with us and they worked at the restaurant, one of us always was with the kids. And I mean, we were we made no profits, probably, we made probably about $1,200 a month to pay for our rent and the rest, we lived at the restaurant, we barely got get because we just came to the restaurant. All day long, we were just there. For about two years, we make no profits, it was very, very hard. I mean, I think I lost 25 pounds out of stress. And you know, being on your feet all day. I remember vividly once being in the office with my husband thinking about how we’re going to pay payroll, and it was like the bill was going to be $10,000. And it’s Tuesday, and it’s going to be, you know, on Thursday was gonna hit and we didn’t have the money in the bank. And it’s really different when you’re, you know, like a regular person, okay, we’re going to cut back, we’re not going to go out to eat, or we’re going to when you have a $10,000 payroll that’s about to hit. I mean, it’s not about saving here and there. It’s about a, you know, growing stale unit, you know what I mean? So it was, I’m not going to say was easy, it’s continuously as hard and challenging. And it’s well worth it. It’s just childbirth. It’s very painful, but it’s well worth it. As part of that.
Chad Franzen 12:00
Did you? Did you use the the recipes that were already in place from the previous owners for the pizzas? Or did you bring immediately things to the table on that, in that respect?
Hengam Stanfield 12:10
So that one, I mean, that there were not written recipes, systems documented anywhere, it was just this person would make it this way that person would make it that way. It was a lot of hit and miss. My parents, they really assisted with that. I mean, every batch of doing we’ve gone through our dough iterations like and with temperature in the summer needs to be a little bit different in the winter need to be different. So my folks really helped with our recipes in the beginning to get that going.
Chad Franzen 12:38
Wow, amazing. So what kind of gave you some traction or what gave you the most results as you got started?
Hengam Stanfield 12:44
So one of the things that happened, you know, within a few months, we realize the restaurant is empty most of the time and the staff has a great time. They’re building fantastic relationships, they’re having a great time at the restaurant, the staff that you know, they’re, they’re getting paid, so it doesn’t matter. So we realized if we’re just sitting at the restaurant waiting for customers to come, we have a Chick fil A in our parking lot. And my husband would just I would be looking from our glass inside looking out and I be like, what is what are those people doing over there? I mean, we were empty most of the time and then we realized you know what if we just sit at the restaurant and just wait nothing’s gonna happen. So we got that memo and we realized we need to be out there. So we have religiously taken food out and pizzas complimentary pizzas out to businesses in like a two mile radius of our of our restaurant. Every single day. For years. I mean years, we would hit five or six businesses every single day my husband would take pizza I would take pizza shaking hands. You know, there was a parade in town we’d be there there is a grand opening. So we bring free food. I mean, we have given I mean like entering Caterpillar facility is all like locked up with security. We say hey, we’re just a local pizzeria. We got some pizzas for you also staff people would let us in and that you just need to make friends you need to go out meet people shake hands and be known this the the enemy of small businesses obscurity, you know, we open at the same time at Chick fil A, they run a great restaurant business. I have nothing against them. And we’re good friends with the owners. But the minute they open average, you know, based on the news, I don’t know exactly, but they’re making like 40 million a year projected. As soon as they opened, we have to start from zero because we’re obscure. You’re a small business. Nobody knows you. Nobody needs you. Nobody needs another Mexican restaurant, everybody or another pizzeria. Everybody’s needs are taken. You know you yourself you probably already have your go to pizza place or go to Mexican. You go to Chinese whatever. And a new restaurant opens you have absolutely no reason to go there. You need to give people an incentive to come try your food you need to be you know what I mean? So we had to learn that the hard way and we went incredibly aggressive and sales does cure a lot of problems in business. So Oh, I remember I mean, my feet hurt. I mean, we were I mean hours and hours of working, which is very common in our industry. I mean, laying in bed next to my husband, you’re so tired, you can’t even sleep because you were that exhausted. And we were under a lot of pressure. And but at least we’re like, you know, I’m like, exhausted and I’m in pain. But at least we got good sales today, that was just a one good thing. You know, we don’t have staff, this person quit this crash and burn, at least we had good sales, literally, that will get you through. So that’s the one thing you need to focus on. And that was the thing with Making The Dough Show. It’s like we need we don’t really we need to focus on growing sales, with sales. Everything else almost works itself out. You can pay people more once you make more money. And when you can people pay when you can pay more, you can get more applicants, it’ll everything will work itself out if it makes sense. For the most part.
Chad Franzen 15:50
So things kind of started develop to develop for you when was the restaurant then you said you were sitting there on the restaurant would be empty, and you’d watch Chick fil A being full? When did that kind of one of the tables kind of start to turn?
Hengam Stanfield 16:00
I think it took about a year to get there. To to get there. And it was like a January week gradually, we we’ve had 10 to 15% sales increase since then, for the last few years, even you know sometimes 20% sales growth. And also social media was different back then. If you recall, it was the times that you wanted people to like your Facebook page and stuff back then it was 2014. Because when you would post something, everybody would everybody would see it. If you remember those times, those were good times. And I was listening to Gary Vee I was listening to those, you know, we implemented a lot of those things and we happy with took advantage of social media then when we did because now it’s just different. And you need to leverage things is just different than what it was. It’s still as effective, of course. But we were able to really reach out to a lot of our customers via social media. That worked as well. Very good for us then.
Chad Franzen 17:01
So you have gotten to the point where what you you’ve already gotten to the point where you have expanded and you’re ready to expand even further. What got you to that point? How did you know where you are at that point? And are you still really aggressive in terms of sales,
Hengam Stanfield 17:17
We’re still very aggressive because there’s so much is on the line. You when you invest a lot of money, especially with the expansion, we’re like my husband, I were talking about who’s like, Okay, what for the three restaurants to sign is going to be $25,000 I’ve not even requested it when you when you pay for it’s gonna be like 46 weeks. So we put a banner up, we ordered this huge banner, and he put a wood frame around it, we have a banner up right now. And we’ve bootstrapped everything throughout our career here and with a restaurant, but you got you know, so there was a lot of money, you know, the oven was 20k here, 15k. There, we are, like, we have currently have a lot of credit card debt. As we opened the other stores, once we open them, they’re projected to do well, and they’re in good areas. And because we’ve done our due diligence, and God willing, it’ll work out but it is we’re still very, very aggressive about sales, because you have to you have to be so we can pay our people well, I am very passionate about that. But if you don’t have sales, nobody gets paid. You know, it’s just so that as part of that, but we it was a decision to make to to expand for years we wanted. And that’s the first thing everybody who’s gonna you work for someone else, you have a job, then your your wanted to be free. Everybody wants this freedom saying, Oh, you want to be free and you make money every month without needing to be there all the time. You know, that’s this, this first thing that a lot of people want. That’s why they enter into the business world. And once we were making very low six figures where we started getting really bored, and it was not very healthy for us as a business thing stagnated a little bit, that’s in 2019. And we were we were not at the restaurants much we had the two store, we had managers, we were not really at the restaurants much. And we got really stagnant. And we decided to even you know, sell the restaurants and somebody offered us a check for $540,000 for the two restaurants. And that’s when we were like okay, well if we sell the restaurants what are we going to do you know? And then we realized what we love food and we love business. So we will still be in food and in business. So we already have this what’s the point of selling it so it was actually a very good point for us to seek clarity as to who we wanted to be and we realized, you know, go bigger go home, you know, we need to go all in. And so we have been and obviously then soon after pandemic hit. And it was very challenging. I’m sure for everybody going through the pandemic shortage of supplies. We’re gonna have staff and all kinds of logistics that went into that. But we were able to grow our sales like 20% through the all the pandemic stuff and before Old enough to move forward, we were talking today gas is probably going to maybe hit $6 A gallon, that’s going to affect people’s spendings. It’s about four something where we’re at right now in Texas. And that’s going to, you know, we’re going to have challenges hiring drivers. We’re, these are, you know, but somebody’s got to grow and expand, and better be us. I mean, we have to, if you just shrink as the world is going crazy, you’re going to just stay in your home and not do anything. I’m saying, as a business, you have to go out and you need to take it, it’s going to be difficult, but somebody’s got to do it. So why not? You? Why not me? You know what I mean?
Chad Franzen 20:36
So yeah, you know, that you mentioned the price of a sign, those are things that most average people I guess, don’t think about you drive by, why does that person have such a crappy sign? Well, now we know you know, it’s very pricey.
Hengam Stanfield 20:49
It’s very, very expensive. It’s about 1000 per per sign that goes up there. And, and rent is very expensive. You know, we had to, like renew our alcohol license, we sell beer and wine 3000. Bob likes 2000. I mean, it’s just all the time, you have to have savings, you have to things break all the time. Oh, they left this there, or this broke $2,000? It’s, I mean, I physically, ah, my body wanted. But you know what I mean? It’s just the cost of business, sadly,
Chad Franzen 21:21
sure. So, you know, I have a lot of friends who have engineering backgrounds, and they no longer do engineering, but they say to their degrees, and their experience helped them because of their ability to solve problems. Would you say that that has been the case for you guys?
Hengam Stanfield 21:34
Oh, absolutely. And being objective, when things get very emotional restaurant is a people business, and you have a lot of people involved, and being able to look at things in terms of process was a problem, it has been very beneficial. And also it’s been the other side of the coin that has been a little bit difficult is understanding that, for example, with us, as engineers, we look for problems, we’re trained to look for problems to go solve them. And that leads to not seeing the good that is going on you when you’re always focused on the problem, you make it a little bit unbearable, people work with you, because you’re maybe they’re doing 10 things, right, and they’re doing two things wrong, and you really focus on what’s going wrong. Because that’s what we’re programmed to do. And the people business, you have to balance it out. You need to micromanage processes, and you need to lead people there, you know, kind of a two different things. And if you’re always again, if you look for problems, you will find it, you will find problems to solve on an ongoing basis. It’s like weeds in the yard. And they’re always gonna be weeds. They’re growing everywhere, you know. But it makes business fun. I feel like as an engineer, it transfers into doing business, especially when you’re good with numbers analytics, business is all math after all. So it lends to skill sets that applies to business, for sure.
Chad Franzen 23:03
Couple more questions for you. How has my tengas developed as a brand? I know that building a brand is one of your specialties. How would you say it’s kind of evolved as a brand?
Hengam Stanfield 23:11
Sure, I mean, as a brand, I would say that if somebody’s in the first two years of their business, and they’re not profitable, they should not really worry about brand in the beginning because you need money. Firstly, to hit breakeven and make profits. So you need to be focused on sales. But once you know you are in the profit zone and you’re in the black, then branding has a lot to do with who are you as you know, who do you want? Who are the customers we want to introduce? So for example, families with young kids, because we have young children. So that’s a demographic we know how to serve. I know how to market to moms, maybe I’m not as good at marketing to college students or whatever, because that’s not the world I’m in right now though. I’m pretty good with that college has lived a long time in college but vividly I remember we had another pizzeria local pizzeria in our town and the couple owners, they are empty nesters. They have a lot of alcohol focused, they have big screens for people to come watch sports and their clients and customers are a lot of empty nesters, great people. But you know, it’s important to know who you are and what kind of customers you want so and to be aligned with that. So branding Wise, who we wanted to be known is that we wanted to be family owned, we want to for people to know that we’re you know, generous because nobody loves to support a greedy business owner. So we want to highlight people in our community. We host to spirit nights fundraisers for schools and we donate 30% of sales generated back to the schools. We have great relationships with schools, again, we donate pizzas, or there’s a teacher’s thing going on. We give out a lot of those that’s part of our branding and showing goodwill. It’s a big part of our business. It’s not as just brand new to purpose of what we do. A business is nothing without community, particularly local business. I mean, I can’t worry about what folks are doing in Colorado, we focus about the three to five mile radius of those that are around our restaurant. It’s an it’s an advantage and disadvantage, of course, being a local business owner. So when you focus on the advantage, there’s how many schools are here, how many churches are here? How many businesses are here, these are the hospitals, these are this. And we need to be known by everybody, and looking for ways to serve them. That has always worked for us. And that is part of our branding that we do. And we create a lot of commercials in house for our, for my 10 years, we involve our children, our community, people appreciate the hustle people want. When you see a small business owner, who hustled and bootstraps, people want to support that. So you want to tell those stories, I had a story of the banner, when we put the banner up, we had to go on the roof. I mean, it’s us. And I’m like kids are holding the things I record a reel and I put it up everybody like just because people want to support. You know, they wish to everybody, I think at some point, you want to be a small business owner, you want to work for yourself. Everybody has that dream, but people support that at least in our community. And we try to tell those stories. And that is all part of our brand as well.
Chad Franzen 26:08
That’s great. Sounds great. Hey, what’s one thing you would tell somebody who wants to open their own restaurant that you know, now that maybe you wish you knew back when you guys started,
Hengam Stanfield 26:19
I would say that that person would go back in time, I would say you must go and work at a restaurant for at least three months to see if that is what you want to do if somebody was to approach us as a restaurant owner. And they’re, for example, South San Antonio, that somewhere in North San Antonio say Hey, I just want to, like, up buy y’all lunch or coffee, it doesn’t matter. And I would like to just, you know, talk to you about you know, about the restaurant or whatever we’re happy to openly share point is, wherever this you are that you aren’t watching, you’re listening, and you’d like to be in a restaurant business, go befriend, a couple of restaurant owners, they may really bashed industry. What I’m saying is get a couple of successful restaurant owners that have not that have been able to balance their family and grow their business, not one that’s not successful, because they’re going to tell you don’t enter in this industry because it is hard. And yes, it is hard, but it is doable. If you are passionate about business and food restaurant, there’s nothing like it. I mean, there’s nothing like the restaurant industry. And I think as things get hard, they’re still people want to go to restaurants. So it is a very fun industry. And yes, it is very, very hard. But if you can do it, why not? So
Chad Franzen 27:32
I have one final question for you. But first, how can people find out more about Mattenga’s?
Hengam Stanfield 27:37
Sure, you know, obviously our website mmotank is just ma t t e n ga s.com That’s our website and all the stuff we do on social and Making Dough Show is just everywhere. Making Dough Show’s on YouTube on podcast is MakingDoughShow.com as well. Okay, great.
Chad Franzen 27:53
Hey, if you were to go to Mattenga’s as a customer, what would be your kind of go to item of choice?
Hengam Stanfield 27:59
Oh my goodness. It would be our chicken pesto pizza. I love pesto and basil of course. But our Zeppole donuts are very good. It’s our pizza dough. We cut it and then we fry it and then coated with lemon sugar. That’s it’s good to end the meal on a on a sweet high note is always good. So there’s one.
Chad Franzen 28:17
Very nice. I’m hungry now. Hey, Hengam, It’s been great to talk to you. I really appreciate your time today and I thank you so much.
Hengam Stanfield 28:25
Thank you.
Chad Franzen 28:26
So long, everybody.
Outro 28:27
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